#svithe #ldsconf

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If you're not following Thwitter, you're missing out, folks. Not because I tweet such interesting things, but the conversational nature of Twitter is a marvelous way to build relationships and knowledge. Dandy stuff.

Anyway, bit of background for those of you who merely observe the Mormonness of this blog with a bemused eye, but last week was the Church's semiannual General Conference (my blog notes, response to my twitter notes). For that moim we get together worldwide and leadership speaks from Salt Lake City. It's covered by a goodly number of tv and radio stations and is streamed online). Anyway, it's kind of a big deal. That's my main point.

Watching Conference and taking my notes and then being on Twitter at the same time was an unusual experience. On the one hand, all these things distracted me for the other things. On the other hand however, it was a great way to find other Saints also watching #ldsconf. (Well over 10000 tweets over the weekend.)

I had been mulling a post over the so-called Twitter Stake experience, but I got busy and didn't type anything up.

So I'm going to take my cues from Tyler and make this week's svithe a response to his blogpost on #ldsconf. (Or, more accurately, a reply he made to a comment left for him.) Specifically, he was discussing how Saints can bear (t)witness during the #ldsconf offseason:

I don't think it needs to be anything excessive or overbearing, such that we become twitness bearing zealots. For me, as on this blog, that means not being afraid to discuss spiritual/religious matters when they come up or when I feel compelled to share some experience I've had with God. In the past, I've tried to implement a weekly svithe (a neologism combining seven and tithe) as Theric (also know as Thmazing) and others have done---and that I really should pick up again---as a means to devote one post in a week to spiritual/religious matters. Perhaps a #twitness hashtag (though I see it's already been co-opted for other purposes; let's take it for ourselves!) or some such label might encourage Mormon tweeters to do the same, to share their resolve to live and share the Gospel in real time, to be a support system for other Twitter-day Saints.

Adding a hashtag is the easier way to draw attention to a regular occurrence on Twitter and we have a few options here. One is #ldsconf although that seems necessarily limited to references back to Conference (as if that were a bad thing.

Another is #svithe which I am leery of promoting. Although I'm always happy when someone finds svithing a useful concept, promoting the concept to others seems self-promotional somehow.

The third is #twitness which has hardly been strongly used by anyone to this point --- it could certainly be repurposed. The problem I see is that bearing witness is a phrase less used by Mormons than bearing testimony (though #twestimony is kinda lame).

Anyway, I'm not promoting any particular concept, nor am I convinced the Twitter Stake had enough mass to make something like this a solid phenomenon. But I do think that Mormons (or any serious religious denomination, for that matter) should think about their presence online. And that's best done by the plebes, not the hierarchy. So it's worth discussing and experimenting with and figuring out.

That's all. Dicuss. Here or on Twitter. Remember, I'm @thmazing.

this #svithe on thutopia
last week's #svithe[tacular]
thwitter